9/24/12

Vintage Reads #40: Trashy Paperbacks

God knows I've posted my share of trashy paperbacks. To be fare, though, there are dozens of blogs solely dedicated to the subject. So, you might say I'm actually pretty sparse with the dirty books. Plus, these paperbacks aren't just literary detritus unworthy of our time; they're cultural artifacts. Take for instance the cover above - the counterculture was the subject of many a lurid novel. Just as Paris had been the fantasyland for the male minds of the fifties, the hippie movement also provided lustful appeal to older gents of the sixties. Both Paris and Haight-Ashbury provided male readers an exotic place without inhibition. Who wouldn't want to go there?

"A Scuba-diving Stud" - the unauthorized biography of a young Cousteau, perhaps? For extra points can you count the number of grammatical errors in that tag line? Of course, I shouldn't talk - my mother has a master's degree in English and would fill every one of my posts with red ink if given the chance. Lots of superfluous commas, lots of dashes, and plenty of dot-dot-dot action... Diagram the sentences of Retrospace posts at your own peril.

I can't decide if that's Richard Dawson or George Lazenby. Also, I'm sad to report that a good number of these paperbacks have an ill placed price tag on the cover. I guess the seller never dreamed these would be scanned and posted for hundreds of thousands to see.

From Wikipedia: The Way of a Man with a Maid is an anonymous, sadomasochistic, erotic novel, probably first published in 1908. The story is told in the first person by a gentleman called "Jack", who lures women he knows into a kind of erotic torture chamber, called "The Snuggery", in his house, and takes considerable pride in meticulously planned rapes which he describes in minute detail.

I wouldn't hold your breath for a Pixar adaptation any time soon. I'm a bit curious how this is the sequel yet it's also called 'book three'.

My Nightly Ritual:

Have a bowl of cereal. Post something on Retrospace. Watch TV with the wife, maybe Game of Thrones or Mad Men. Go to bed and read stuff on phone (Reddit, Google Reader, Tumblr) for about thirty minutes. Sleep.

Somehow I don't think my nightly ritual is the same caliber as the one Helen Swanson wrote about. I could be wrong.

Why does this title sound so awful? "Lust in the Desert" would be fine, and so would "Lust Gallops In". What the hell?

I'm currently fully addicted to Lego Batman 2 and would consider myself quite the stud champ. Once again, probably not of the caliber described in this book.

Obviously a twist on Fanny Hill, the most prosecuted and banned book in history. Freddy is a Modern Man..... of Pleasure. (Is that last little bit really necessary?) Interestingly enough, the same author, Catling, wrote the beloved children's book The Chocolate Touch.

Written by Philip Phillips - really? The author's name is as redundant as the tag lines. And how exactly does one pluck a woman?

Awful. I take everything I said in the opening paragraph back about these being culturally valuable. Philip Phillips ruined it for me.

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I mean no copyright infringement by the posting of pictures, videos, etc. on this blog. I do not in any way claim the rights of ownership to any of them. They totally remain the property of their respective owners. I have posted them purely for entertainment purposes only. All written content, unless otherwise noted as being quotes, has been written and copyrighted by me.